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By request.
Since I've heard that the COMLEX is more clinically oriented, would it be useful to review notes from clinical classes that I deem are high yield?
How do COMLEX experiences coincide with QBank Comlex versus USMLEWorld?
I took it last monday and posted quite a bit about my experience, you need to scroll down to the other COMLEX thread, there is a ton of feedback for you there.
LHUEMT911 said:I took it monday, I honestly had 15-20 questions JUST on sympathetic innervations.....pt comes in with gastric ulcer, hypertonicity will be noted at T...... I had a TON of neuro pharm, ADRs, Mech of action, contraindications. I am not just talking about knowing no tyramine with MAOIs, I mean know the specifics for the major drugs within each class as well.
Honestly, if I added up all the neuro pharm I had, it easily made up an entire 50 question block, I am including psych pharm too. Speaking of pysch I had quite a bit of stuff on sleep cycles and disturbances of them.
Tons of micro, I had to read 5 gram stains, had to know the most common and 2nd most common for all the major infections. I had to read 6-7 Head CTs, I only had one EKG and it wasn't too bad, then I had to say how I would treat it, again not bad.
Biochem was minimal, maybe 3 questions on what enzymes were deficient in certain diseases, a few vitamin OD or deficiencies, nothing on classifying viruses by dna or rna or that.
The question about breaks:
When you start the exam the clock is at 4 hours, so if you finish section I early the time does carry over for the other morning blocks, you just get 4 hours for the whole morning. I was under the impression you had an hour per 50 question section. After the 2nd section you get a prompt that says you can take a 10 minute break and the clock is ticking the second the prompt comes up. The 4 hour clock in the top right corner is still also ticking during your ten minute breaks, if you take that ten minutes you essentially have 3 hours and 50 minutes for the morning sections.
You can take the break or just click next to skip it. The same thing after block 6. After block 4 you get a 40 minutes lunch which does not count against the 8 hours for the test. I took about 20 minutes and went back in to start again. You again get 4 hours for the 4 afternoon sections. I don't know of anyone there that had a problem with finishing in 8 hours that is including taking the breaks. Good Luck Everyone.
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On the other you have a test that ask ambiguous questions with little meaning that test none of your reasoning ability. Just shear memorization of useless garbage that is seemingly unimportant, guess not. I have no idea how I did on either test, but the USMLE made a lot more sense. I think they must have monkey's writing the comlex, no wonder programs don't accept it. By far the worst written test I've ever seen, and our OPP dept comes up with some wacked out questions. My $.02......may comlex DIE!!!!!
I've met some relatively high-up-there DO's who actually take pride in and chuckle about testing on info you can't find in First Aid.... as far as how to interpret that....who knows.....but there's definitely some truth to itThe questions on COMLEX are pretty straightforward but the information they test on is extremely random. I swear it seems like half of the test had information that was not in review books. They had a lot of nitty gritty information from class notes. Whereas with the USMLE, they seem to ask questions in an indirect manner with no buzzwords but the information is available in First Aid and other review books
I've met some relatively high-up-there DO's who actually take pride in and chuckle about testing on info you can't find in First Aid.... as far as how to interpret that....who knows.....but there's definitely some truth to it
I know who some of those people are. A professor at my school writes questions for it and she takes pride in asking information that isn't in First Aid
what subject?
Raggaman, with that being said with regards to the neuroanatomy, would it be a good idea to read HY neuro, since FA doesn't cover most of that? Thanks.
Just wondering, what does the COMLEX consider to be the doc for s. pneumo. I always thought amoxicillin, but some sources say pen G. Anyone know what NBOME thinks?
just took it yesterday....
Biggest surpises:
1. LONG F(&*^$G QUESTIONS!!! after taking the usmle a few days ago I was really looking forward to 2-3 liners w/o much lab data.....I was shocked and actually really pissed about how many long ones I had (~30-40% of q's)
overall...honestly decent....I'll admit that I was surprised.... still some flat-out gimme's and a few (~10%) where you had to figure out wtf they are asking you (ie you can interpret the q in different ways and get a dif answer)....but I expected to fly through this thing and ended up taking over 7 hours.....i was literally shaking my head and saying wtf every time a 5-8 liner w/ lab data came upThat is interesting. How would you rate the quality of the questions as compared to USMLE? I did see a vast improvement in the quality from Step 1 to step 2, but it was still very heavy on the 2 liner questions.
absolutely 100% agreethe first aid biochem should be sufficient at all costs.
just took it yesterday....
Micro: relatively straight forward...but you really have to know all of micro....a few more zoonotics and bioterrorism q's then I expected.
Pharm: mostly MOA, indications and major sides....FA was enough for all except a few q's....it wasn't very hard but you really have to know ALL of pharm
for micro and pharm....FA would have been enough for ~90% of the questions that I got...i got a few oddball things that I somehow remembered from class (or at least remembered learning about...)Is FA enough for these too subjects or should I use the micro cards and pharm recall???
I agree....but would say you'd absolutely destroy this test from studying and knowing cold the info in: FA + Savarese + HY Neuro + RR or BRS Path + the blue boxes in the musculoskeletal anatomy chapter in MooreI think FA was sufficient for biochem (way sufficient), micro and pharm. As far as the rest of the material - the advice that all you need is FA + Savarese is incorrect. While Savarese does cover the OMM part of thest, I felt there was a lot of materiial on my exam that FA did not cover. It would be nice if the NBOME provided a book to students so that students were all on a level playing field. Instructors from 20+ schools submit these questions and there is material tested that I was never taught at my school nor found in First Aid. Even if this NBOME board study guide was 1,000 pages, it would serve students better to have the material that will be tested instead of having the random things that were popping up on my test...
Vent over...